On Stupidity

Bowing to pressure from rightwing nutjob parents’ groups and doctors’ groups who apparently are concerned primarily with physicians’ bottom lines, Merck has chosen to stop lobbying to make Gardasil, it’s HPV vaccine, part of the mandatory battery of vaccines administered to school age girls.

This makes me want scream and hit people with my shoe. More than usual, even.

This should be part of the mandatory vaccination panel for every young woman. This vaccine was found 100% effective in preventing two strains of HPV that cause 70% of cervical cancers. ARE WE LISTENING PEOPLE? It’s a shot that can prevent cancer.

Ponder that for a second. Take your time. I’ll wait.

Now why would anyone oppose a shot that fucking prevents cancer? Well, if you’re a rightwing nutjob, it’s because the HPV is considered a sexually transmitted infection and giving girls a shot to prevent it might encourage promiscuity. So, if you have sex before marriage, you deserve to have cancer. Riiight. Okay. I gotcha. What if you wait until marriage, but your partner did not, and he gives you HPV? Do you still deserve it? What if you marry a widower, or remarry one? What if, oh I don’t know, your uber-godly husband cheats on you? Do you deserve cervical cancer because your spouse can’t keep it in his pants? What if you’re a rape victim? Deserve cancer then?

Whatever, I don’t care what the answer is. I look at it like this. Parents can make whatever plans and have whatever hopes they want for their kids, but those kids are ultimately individuals who are going to grow up and to make their own choices. Some will undoubtedly follow their parents’ wishes and wait until they marry, others will go to college and discover beer bongs and casual sex. Further, we compel parents to do things to protect their children—like car seats—so why not this?

The other argument comes from the good folks in the medical profession. It goes like this: many insurance companies are under-reimbursing for the vaccine, and we don’t know who is going to pay for poor girls to get the vaccine, so we shouldn’t require the vaccine.

Okay. So, poor girls deserve cancer? GREAT. Doctors deserve to make more money on the vaccine? Even better.

You know what, requiring that all girls get the vaccine would, if my understanding of basic economics is sound, drive down the per unit cost to produce each vaccine dose. This would, if a modicum of public pressure were duly applied, likely cause the good people at Merck to pillage a little less with the sale price.

The most asinine argument, by far, is the fact that cervical cancer only kills 3700 women per year in the U.S., thanks to PAP smears and available treatment. So? Who cares if fewer than 10,000 women develop cervical cancer each year? How many woman are diagnosed with pre-cancerous abnormal cells and have to go through painful, expensive, uncomfortable treatments? That have the further added bonus of, at times, increasing the difficulty of being able to carry a baby to term. This is the argument? THIS?

ASSHOLES.

You know, if HPV caused prostate cancer, they’d put Gardasil in the water like fluoride.